Agape, Eros, Gender: Towards a Pauline Sexual Ethic

Pro Ecclesia ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 374-376
Author(s):  
Francis Watson
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Ethic

Theology and Practice in Evangelical Churches

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Goddard
Keyword(s):  
Church Leadership ◽  
Evangelical Christians ◽  
General Acceptance ◽  
Evangelical Churches ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
Women In Church Leadership ◽  
Sexual Ethic ◽  
And Gender

This chapter examines the continuities, development, and diversity found among evangelical Christians as they explore different patterns of evangelical response to new and challenging questions relating to sexuality and gender. Evangelicals have generally accepted contraception although there has been some recent opposition. Understandings and responses to divorce and remarriage vary from prohibition to generous accommodation with general acceptance of diverse genuinely evangelical views. Issues of gender and women in church leadership have, however, caused tensions and divisions between more restrictive ‘headship’ views and more egalitarian understandings, raising issues related to biblical inspiration and authority as well as hermeneutics. In contrast to diversity in these areas, most evangelicals remain committed to a sexual ethic focused on marriage and abstinence for the unmarried, and thus opposed to any approval of homosexual partnerships. Although some evangelicals are questioning this, most see change here as unbiblical and going beyond evangelicalism.

Nailed: Lytton Strachey’s Jesus Camp

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Avery Todd
Keyword(s):  
Short Stories ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Social Vision ◽  
Ethical Discourse ◽  
Alternative Sexualities ◽  
Sexual Ethic

Avery explores Lytton Strachey’s engagement with Christian ethical discourse and iconography to promote a queer ethical ideal of friendship and intimacy unfettered by moral convention. In his famous biographies and in a series of essays, short stories, and dialogues, it is clear he was perennially interested in religious questions and themes. Despite his atheism and disapproval of religious faith, he believed that the achievement of sexual and ethical autonomy, the legitimation of alternative sexualities and a new sexual ethic, demanded a serious critique of Christian moralism. In a sado-masochistic crucifixion experiment in the late 1920s, he allowed himself to be affixed to a cross and pierced in the side by his lover Roger Senhouse, providing a striking example from the modernist period and from the Bloomsbury milieu of how an iconically normative object may be used to express a queer ethical, sexual, and social vision.

scholarly journals Das Siebente Gebot, das Hohelied und Calvin

2002 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Loader
Keyword(s):  
Old Testament ◽  
Song Of Songs ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Positive Meaning ◽  
Sexual Ethic ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Cost ◽  
The Erotic

The seventh commandment, Calvin and CanticlesTaking the Seventh Commandment (according to the numbering of the Calvinist tradition) as its focus, this article examines the hermeneutical principles of the Reformer, John Calvin, for the exposition of the Decalogue. This is related to a consideration of the ‘theological meaning’ of the Book of Canticles (Song of Songs), an Old Testament book which, significantly, does not feature among the commentaries of Calvin. It is argued that the secular impact of the erotic songs is equally strong and meaningful against the backdrop of Hellenistic Jewry, as it is against that of preexilic Israel. It is concluded that the dimension of the Song’s sexual ethic is not an abrogation of the Law, but an extension of it: Here it is not a matter of mere prohibition and consequently, artificial techniques are not necessary in order to distil positive meaning from the negative commandment. Neither is this sexual ethic a matter of exclusive male rights, nor is purity protected at the cost of justice – Eros is taken up in Agape.

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